Matchlock Gun, Metropolitan Museum of Art: Arms and Armor
Bequest of George C. Stone, 1935
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Medium: Steel, wood, gold, silver, pigment
This sporting gun is distinctive for its delicately painted stock
covered with hunting scenes, birds and other animals, and landscapes.
The gold-damascened barrel is a masterpiece of forging, having both a
square cross section and a square bore. It is signed by the smith Haji
Sha’ban, who signed two other barrels on guns captured by the British at
Lahore, in northwest India (now Pakistan), in the nineteenth century.
